Wisconsin Journal

Number 13

19 December 1997



We spent Thanksgiving here in Madison, and shared our turkey with

our friends Sharon and Steve from Chicago, and their two kids,

Samantha and Niels. It was appropriate time to get together, as

Sharon and Steve first hit it off over a Thanksgiving weekend in

Stony Brook 16 years ago at the house where Sharon, Kaye and I

lived at the time. (Steve is a friend of Kaye and mine from grad

school days at Princeton.) I had visited them a couple times in Cambridge

and then in Chicago, but Kaye hadn't seen them since we moved from

New York to Oregon in 1982. They had last seen Luke when he was

a few months old, and had never met Sarah at all. Sharon and

Steve had both attended UW at various times, so it was old home

week on many fronts.



On Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend we visited Milwaukee for the first

time. Our first stop was "The Domes" in Mitchell Park. The Domes

are three huge greenhouses, each 85 feet (7 stories) high, that

look like half-football shapes. (They are properly referred to

as "conoidal" domes rather than geodesic domes.) There are about

4000 plant species spread among the three domes. One features

tropical plants, the second has an arid climate, and the third

features changing exhibits. It was planted for Christmas when we

were there, with poinsettias, white snap dragons and cyclamens, plus

several 40-foot Christmas trees.



We then toured the tropical dome, where coats were definitely a

handicap. There was a "Panama Hat Plant", a kind of palm whose use

should be obvious. I'm always interested to see food plants, and

there were quite a few: carob, macademia nut, cocoa, taro, chicle,

sugar apple (I think it's called pina in Brazil), date palm, guava

and manioc. The roots of the last are used to make tapioca, once

all the prussic acid is removed. We also saw a kava plant. In places

where it grows, the children chew the roots, spit them out and strain

the result, which the adults drink as a mild narcotic. Yum.



Most of my time in the arid dome I spent looking at all the different

kinds of hot peppers they had: several varieties of habanero, Peruvian

purple, ancho, piquin, serrano, fatalli (Chinese) and Bolivian rainbow,

which changes from white to orange to red to purple as it matures.

There were also three or four varieties of wild peppers, which are

actually hotter than habaneros. The adenia plant was other-worldly,

resembling a green, spiny octopus. A plot near the end was devoted to

the flora of Madagascar, most of which I had never seen before.



The highlight of the day, however, was the Milwaukie Public Museum.

We only got through about half of it, and will definitely go back to

see the rest. It's hard to describe the kind of museum it is---kind

of anthropology, culture and natural history all in one, but done

exceptionally well. For the areas we visited, the primary organization

was by region, with exhibits on history, culture, geography and

plants and animals intermixed. It's an effective way to group things,

as you start seeing the linkages between raw materials and crafts

and local customs and so forth. Most of the animal exhibits were in

dioramas, which Sarah really enjoyed. She pointed out the rendering

of the bird droppings was much superior to that in the Maritime Museum

in Menominee, particularly for the seagulls. A possible artistic

career we didn't even realize existed until this year. My favorite

dioramas (and I think Kaye's, too) were life-size market scenes from India

and Guatamala. They were amazingly detailed--as long as I stood there,

I kept noticing new things.



The top floor is organized around the continents of the world, plus

exhbits on the oceans and the Pacific islands. There is a kind of

mezzanine level to this floor that features pre-Colombian America.

The kids recognized several of the Mayan ruins that we visited when

we were down in the Yucatan a few years ago. We saw real

shrunken heads from South America, along with guidance in

distinguishing real human shrunken heads from shrunken monkey heads.

Also an interesting explanation of the various forms of money on

the isle of Yap, of which the highest denomination are giant stone

disks. They have to be carved out of rock on a different island, and

brought to Yap on canoes. They can weigh several tons, and if someone

is killed during the manufacture or transport of one, it is worth

more.



The next floor down has a whole wing devoted to North American Indians,

and we lost Kaye to the baskets. The centerpiece is a revolving scene

depicting a Wisconsin Indian powwow, which features all seven of

Wisconsin's tribes. Sarah recognized the song playing from the powwow

that she and Kaye attended in the Dells. The kids and I moved on

to an exhibit of plants and animals of Wisconsin. Did you know that

there are cacti native to Wisconsin? Certain species of prickly pear

grow in the Driftless Area. We spent a lot of time at a display showing

a Night Heron family (excellent rendering of droppings). Teenage

herons look like something right our of Dr. Suess. They are mostly

green (to blend in with tree branches I imagine) and have no flight

feathers. Their nearly bare wings look like arms. Luke thought they

looked like punk chickens, while Sarah thought they looked halfway

between a plant and an animal. Adolescent Blue Herons look similar.



A traveling show about amber, which Kaye and I saw at the Smithsonian

last summer, was in the special exhibits galleries. Largely the

same show, with some art and lots of fossils (though I missed the

petrified termite fart this time around). The one main difference

was that there was a lot more information on the effort to reconstruct

the Amber Room from a Russian palace, whose walls and furnishings

were covered almost entirely in amber. The Nazis had removed the

panels during WWII, and they were never recovered after the war.

However, the reconstruction is over half done. One of the partially

completed panels is even part of the display. There were a number

of taped interviews with the craftsman who are recreating the room,

showing their techniques and explaining how translucent pieces were

beveled to hold in transparent pieces, so the latter could be

engraved on the back and not have to be glued to the panels. The

artists only have 38 photos of the room to work with, and only one

is in color. The panels have some relief, though determining how

much from the photos was problemmatic, until someone noticed that

one photo had a mirror in which some of the pieces appeared in profile.

With that photo and the aid of a computer, they have been able to

determine the thickness of all the pieces to within a millimeter.

I found it fascinating. In somecases, the artists have had to

rediscover techniques that have been lost for over a century. If

the amber show comes to your town, it is a must-see.



We skipped the rest of that floor to go see the Streets of Old Milwaukee

exhibit, which tries to depict the flavor of Milwaukee between 1850

and 1900. While the buildings have been constructed at 3/4 scale,

they include actual doors, windows and counters from the period.

The bit of trivia I picked up here was that the answering machine

was invented in Wisconsin. I saw the original model, called the

Electronic Secretary, which was prototyped before WWII. However,

development was suspended until after the war.



Next to this area is the European Village, which features homes and

shops representing the 33 different ethinic groups who immigrated

to Wisconsin between 1875 and 1925. The houses were all done up

in Christmas decorations while we were there, although Kaye detected

some improvisation---every house seemed to have a Christmas tree

with decorations, even though some of these cultures don't have them.



Our time and our stamina ran out at this point. I hope to get back

and report on the rest of the museum soon.



Did you know?: The world headquarters for Rayovac batteries, Oscar Meyer

foods and Parker Pen are all in Wisconsin. Rayovac and Oscar Meyer are

in Madison. There is a big Oscar Meyer weiner plant on the way to

the airport, but I think cold cuts are made in Milwaukee. Parker Pen,

which also now owns Waterman, is in Janesville. Hunting season on the

Energizer Bunny stays open here until mid-January.



On the Packermania front:



Kaye spotted a couple new items of Packerware recently:



A Lava Lamp in green and gold.



A Packers rosary. The Hail Mary's are alphabet beads spelling out

messages like "Go Packers", and the Our Fathers are footballs.

They are made by a woman in West Allis, who got the idea to make

rosaries from two nuns at the school where she works.



The Packers now lead the NFL in official merchandise sales, having

moved up from number 20 in 1993. Approximately 25% of all NFL-

licensed merchandise features the Green Bay logo, slightly edging

out the Dallas Cowboys.



Finally, from the "Dangers of Being a Packers Fan" department:



Dean Inman recently went into a barber shop in Minneapolis wearing

a Green Bay Packers sweater. He was accompanied by his brother

Dan, a Vikings fan. The conversation turns to football, and the barber,

Bernard Walters, starts dumping on Brett Favre, the quarterback for

the Packers. Dan says something about Korey Stringer, a very large

Vikings lineman, and Dean pokes fun at his weight. Bernard the barber

takes offense, and tells Dean that Stringer is his cousin, and he

should knock it off. But Dean and Dan keep cracking the fat jokes.

Finally, in the words of Dean, "The guy takes the choppers and runs

them right down the center of my head and gives me a reverse Mohawk."

Dean and Dan quickly left the barber shop, because it appeared Bernard

had a pistol.



Got to finish up--we're off to Santa Fe for Christmas.

Dave